잔 에뷔테른의 초상

Modigliani painted this in 1919, in Paris, in the last full year he had. Jeanne Hebuterne was an art student, about 14 years younger than him, and by now his companion and the mother of his child. He painted her more than 20 times, always with the same long neck and gently tilted oval head. Notice the eyes, often left as flat almond shapes with no clear pupil. Asked once why he did that, he is said to have answered that we look at the world with one eye and at ourselves with the other. Within months he was dead of meningitis, worn out by illness and drink. Jeanne, pregnant with their second child, took her own life two days after he died.